


Tuesdays at the End of the World

by submersive



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 17:34:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18642811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/submersive/pseuds/submersive
Summary: They say the only certainty in life is that nothing is fair. That nothing is easy. That shit happens and then you die.Fact is, that’s only partially true.Tony and Steve are dead, but fatality’s never stopped them.





	Tuesdays at the End of the World

They say the only certainty in life is that nothing is fair. That nothing is easy. That shit happens and then you die.

Fact is, that’s only partially true.

 

-

 

We begin at the end. On a Tuesday. A normal one. Somewhere around 2028.

They’re both long dead, but that’s not important.

It’s not the how that matters, not anymore. Once you’re buried, burned, completing the food chain – the troubles that got you there start to worry you less. 

All that matters is that Tony and Steve aren’t enemies, they’re not lovers, they’re not even friends. 

They’re birds, they’re rocks, they’re trees.

Chasing each other, once a part of the same land, bending sideways to touch in the wind.

The whatever that delivered them is insignificant.

  
—

 

It’s raining in heaven, it’s raining in hell. It’s raining on a Sunday.

Tell me the first thing you remember.

 _I remember the first time I ever went to Coney Island_. Steve’s laughter sounds like the shake of palms. The weep of willows. _I remember a lake. I swear the water was turquoise blue_. _I remember eating corned beef in the marshes_.

 _Mmm_ , Tony sighs. A breeze picks up from the north and Steve leans into it. _I remember you_.

  
—

 

Everything is about balance – up and down, east and west. The sun rises and sets. A man, a woman, but neither will have good without the bad.

  
  
—

 

The day is dayless, undefined, not a Saturday, or a Friday because days don’t exist.

Not when you’re dead.

Time is fluid like a stream. It trickles freely. It flows out. It ends nowhere.

Tony’s standing in the middle of a field. It’s heather, it’s wheat, maybe it’s _flax_. He could probably tell you if he had any concept what the hell flax really was.

He’s not too sure about the heather, either. That was just a guess.

Steve crosses in long strides, picks a kernel of stray from his hair. _It’s none of them_ , Steve says. _It’s rye._

_Is that true?_

A gulf of air is warm against Tony's lips. Warm like the sun. _Guess it doesn’t really matter now_.

  
  
—

 

 _Lay with me_ , Steve breathes, in nothing less than the biblical sense, and Tony’s long since stopped denying him.

Demurring was for the living world. Same with guilt and horror and abject suffering.

They come together like a vortex, fast and fuming, a naked storm of passion.

Steve breaks them into tributaries, spins them ‘til they merge, twists in and out until they finally shimmer and collapse.

Steve’s all over him, through him, taste and touch and smell and Tony could die again.

Could die happy. Die from the supernova heart-spark of Steve wove around him.

  
  
—

 

 _There is only one path to Heaven_ , Steve says. They are stars, they are moons, they are a circle in the sand.  _On Earth, they call it love_.

A pebble rolls in on the coming tide. A wave washes them away.

  
—

 

The night is darkness, no single point of light. It is carefully bled through blindness by the sound of Steve’s voice.

_I have no concept of infinity, but can you imagine if this was it? If we’ll always come to consciousness as something, or nothing, as anything, and we’ll never stop being together? Do you think that could exist, Tony?_

_I think you’ll jinx us if you don’t quit trying to yank it apart_.

Steve’s hands dissolve like melting ice, ethereal, prying him from anything but Steve’s constant gravity.

 _Tell me what you believe in_.

The answer seems cliché, but lifelessness can change a person. _I believe in you_.

  
  
—

 

It’s an August or November, a winter or a spring, they are cattails on a bayou.

They sway and rock, wet below their knees, sun-bright on golden, rounded shoulders.

They dance together for a half a day until they dance no more.

 _Can’t have pleasure without the pain_ , Tony explains. To Steve this is hilarious.

  
—

 

Tony and Steve are dead, but fatality’s never stopped them.

They are spiral bound to nothing more than their invariable rebirth and each other’s side.

So when it happens, it just doesn’t make a single bit of difference. It only hurts for a second and then it’s done.

Steve is the pink and Tony is the purple in a dawn or in a dusk. The blushing helix of a shell.

Steve says, _Everything is perfect_.

When their colors blend, Tony quietly agrees.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This may be familiar to some of you. It's cos I've written it before and shared then deleted because I may have died from crippling self-esteem issues.


End file.
